


A sorta fairytale

by SharpestRose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly a month after Sirius dies, Remus comes into her room and his hands are cold and make her skin prickle, and he kisses her all over and makes her sob and doesn't let her touch him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A sorta fairytale

1.

Nearly a month after Sirius dies, Remus comes into her room and his hands are cold and make her skin prickle, and he kisses her all over and makes her sob and doesn't let her touch him.

The next morning he's not at breakfast. She doesn't see him until four weeks have passed and the moon's getting heavy again.

"Is this going to become a regular thing?" she asks afterwards, this second time, gathering the tatters of her torn nightshirt across her breasts. "Maybe I can alternate my hair for different seasons. Pink, green, blue, _black_."

"Nymphadora, this isn't anything..."

"Don't call me that," she snaps, and turns over to go to sleep. He leaves, and she can feel his sigh on the air behind him.

  
2.

"I'm too poor, too -"

"Don't you _dare_ say old!" she shouts at him, and throws a handy candlestick at his head. It crashes against the wall with a satisfying thud. "I'm hardly a child, Remus!"

He flinches, and she remembers about Greyback and the children. Well, so much the better that he feels the sting of what she's saying.

"You don't want me," he says now, calmly. His eyes are hollowed and sure. "You pity me, and you want to take care of me. This isn't -"

"You can go rot, for all I care!" she retorts, tears in her eyes. Then she shoves him against the wall and kisses him, until he gives up and touches her.

  
3.

In that in-betweenest of in-between times, between Christmas and New Year, he rests his head on her lap and she strokes his hair and he cries a little, and she says "shush, it's all right". She's not sure why she says it, because it isn't true in the slightest, but it seems like the thing to say.

She falls asleep against the bedstead, the ironwork digging curlicues into her back. She dreams that someone kisses her hair, but when she wakes up Remus is gone and the room is dark and chilly.

  
4.

"Why do you always get to set the rules?" she asks, watching him as he puts his robes back on. "Why can't we be together? Why can't you believe that I love you?"

"You deserve someone better."

"That's not an answer. Why is it all right that we do what you want, but not what I want?"

"You'll be glad we're not involved when you meet someone better," Remus says with a certainty like stone.

"Someone better, someone better. You're like a broken record." She's glad he's fully dressed, now. She doesn't think she could manage saying what she wants to say if he was still laid bare before her. "I think we have to stop this."

He looks shocked. "What?"

Her voice is snide. "Maybe I met someone better. Maybe I met someone who lets me have something from him. With him. We don't even have an anything, remember?"

"All right," he says, as mildly as if they were discussing sandwich fillings for lunch. "Goodbye, then."

When he's gone, she swears for a while, and breaks some things she doesn't need, and uses up half a box of tissues.

  
5.

"We... we're not doing this anymore," she gasps out, the rough brickwork rubbing against her back. She digs her heel in against the back of his knee, pulling him in closer against her as he kisses her neck.

"Just this once," he promises, as if there wasn't a this-once last week, or one ten days before that. As if there won't be one next Thursday, or Saturday, or whenever they next end up urgent and fumbling and fighting.

"Yes," she agrees, as adept at lying as he is, pulling his hair so that she can move his mouth to hers. "This isn't anything."

He doesn't answer her.

Maybe he's scared that the hundredth time he says it (the thousandth, the millionth, whatever they're up to), it'll become the truth.

"This isn't anything," she says again, but the words sound as empty as the wind.


End file.
